Mark Anthony Jones is vying with Sherry McCoy and Dan Romero for the seat vacated in January by the resignation of then-Mayor Ed Balico.

n Virgil De la Vega and William Wilkins seek to replace Joanne Ward, the current mayor, who faces possible recall. That election is in two parts: Voters will decide if Ward should be recalled and, if a majority votes yes, whether de la Vega or Wilkins should replace her.

n Councilman Don Kuehne also faces a recall vote. The only replacement candidate is Gerard Boulanger.

The participants agreed the council should stop, or at least explore stopping, further payment on former City Manager Nelson Oliva’s severance, in the wake of revelations that he represented a company he had said he no longer had a stake in at the Soledad and Lompoc city councils in 2009 and 2010.

Oliva stepped down in January; a separation agreement with the city entitles him to a year’s pay of $225,000, in two installments, one in January, the other in July, plus benefits.

Oliva told Bay Area News Group last week that he appeared as a housing expert in Soledad and Lompoc and was not representing his former company, NEO Consulting Inc./Affordable Housing Solutions Group. The company had $3 million worth of contracts with the city in the last three years. Oliva has said that he transferred the company to family members before he became city manager in 2007.

Wilkins and Boulanger also called for suing Oliva for restitution of the first installment of his separation pay and calling in a zero-interest, $250,000 relocation assistance loan Oliva got as part of his original employment contract in 2007. The separation agreement gave Oliva a five-year extension to pay back the loan.

The participants agreed a pedestrian-friendly development and intermodal transit center on the waterfront should go forward.

They agreed Hercules should continue to process its sewage at a plant it shares with Pinole, because it would be cheaper than bolting to the West County Wastewater District in North Richmond.

And they said the city should force developer Red Barn to reimburse money the city paid it to develop the Hercules New Town Center in the increasingly likely event Red Barn cannot deliver on a development agreement.

They also generally agreed to at least explore money-saving measures such as consolidating some police and other services with neighboring jurisdictions, although they diverged on a possible public safety parcel tax advocated by the police union.

The drive to recall Ward and Kuehne revolves around a perception that they rubber-stamped Oliva’s recommendations during the city’s slide into financial crisis, with a $6 million budget shortfall, and their vote in December to dismiss then-interim City Manager Charlie Long and reinstate Oliva, if only for a month. Ward has said Oliva kept the council in the dark about the city’s dire financial condition; Kuehne has said most of the decisions that got Hercules into financial trouble occurred before he came onto the council in 2008.

All of the participants agreed that ethical standards and transparency at City Hall need to be strengthened.

When the non-incumbents were asked what stand they took in the recall drive, Romero, Wilkins and Boulanger emphasized their membership on the leadership team of the recall sponsor group.

McCoy said she was among 75 percent of voters who did not sign the recall petitions; each required signatures of 20 percent of registered Hercules voters.

Jones and de la Vega said they signed the petitions.

Jones, stressing the importance of public safety, said he would support a public safety tax if it is justified, without elaborating. McCoy, who most of the evening read from prepared notes, said the level of public trust in city government needs to be restored and other options evaluated before a tax should be considered. Romero said he would not support a tax for one group exclusively but would consider one for the whole of the city, if vetted by the council.

Ward said she would support a tax to keep public safety intact. De la Vega said he would support it only after further cuts and as a last resort. Wilkins said he would support it if the police union picks up the cost of some existing benefits and negotiates lower-cost benefits for new employees.

Boulanger said the city should look into other options first, such as sharing some police services with other jurisdictions. Kuehne said he would be in favor of putting a tax on the ballot to let residents decide.

Tom Lochner covers Berkeley and occasionally West Contra Costa County for the Bay Area News Group. Tom grew up in Western Europe. He was a translator for a patent law firm and an international bank in Manhattan, then a housing manager in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan, before moving to California to become a journalist.

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